Sir James at first laughed merrily at the extraordinary screwings of visage and contortions of attitude, and the useless demonstration of effort with which the clowns aimed their shafts and drew their bow, sometimes to find the arrow on the grass at their feet, sometimes to see it producing consternation among the bystanders; but when he saw Brewster standing silently apart, viewing their efforts with a scorn visible enough in the dead stolidity of his countenance, he murmured a bitter interjection, and turned away with folded arms and frowning brow. Nigel again urged their departure, but at that moment the sweet notes of a long narrative ballad began to sound to the accompaniment of a harp, and he stood motionless while the wild mournful ditty told of the cruelty of the Lady of Frendraught, and how 'Morning sun ne'er shone upon Lord John and Rothiemay. Large tears were dropping from under the hand with he veiled his emotion; and when Nigel touched his cloak to remind him that the horses were ready, he pressed the old man's hand, saying, with a sigh, 'I heard that last at my father's knee! It rung in my ears for many a year! Here, lad!' and dropping a gold coin into the wooden bowl carried round by the blind minstrel's attendant, he was turning away, when the glee-man, detecting perhaps the ring of the coin, broke forth in stirring tones-- "It fell about the Lammas tide, When moormen win their hay, The doughty Earl of Douglas rode Into England to catch a prey." Again he stood transfixed, beating time with his hand, his eyes beaming, his hips moving as he followed the spirit-stirring ballad; and then, as Douglas falls, and is laid beneath the bracken bush, unseen by his men, and Montgomery forces Hotspur to yield, not to him, but 'to the bracken bush That grows upon the lily lea,' he sobbed without disguise; and no sooner was the ballad ended than he sprang forward to the harper, crying, 'Again, again; another gold crown to hear it again!' 'Sir,' entreated Nigel, 'remember how much hangs on your speed.' 'The ballad I _must_ have,' exclaimed Sir James, trying to shake him off. 'It moves the heart more than aught I ever heard! How runs it?' '_I_ know the ballad,' said Malcolm, half in impatience, half in contempt. 'I could sing every word of it. Every glee-man has it.'